Break In, Carry Out
by BiteMeTechie
Summary: In which Selina Kyle is not good with subtlety and Bruce Wayne has lousy people skills. Sounds like your average night in Gotham City.


__This story was written for the Free For All Fic For All-or FFAFFA for short-over on the Ask the Squishykins tumblr, wherein Twinings and I offer ourselves up to fill as many fic prompts as humanly possible with stories ranging in length from 100 to 16,000 words. The current round runs until May 1st, 2014, so if you'd like a fic written to your custom specifications, please don't hesitate to drop by and ask for it! :)__

_Prompt: Batman has a taco while on a stakeout with Catwoman_

* * *

Lots of words could be used to describe a stakeout: Boring. Monotonous. Slightly more interesting than watching paint dry. There were probably a hundred others, but those served nicely and none of the more creative alternatives were coming to mind no matter how hard she tried to force them.

Comfortably settled on her knees, Selina Kyle stretched on the rooftop, extending her arms and raking her claws on the stone beneath. They left marks behind, shallow valleys that were noticeable enough to say _Catwoman Was Here_. Her shoulder blades shifted inside the catsuit, rubbing against the supple black leather, the effect not unlike a restless house cat. She stared at the stars, counted a few until she lost interest, then rolled onto her back to look up at the sky.

"You could be doing something _useful._"

"I could also be doing something _fun_. Let's not get hung up on might-have-beens." She turned onto her side, arm draped over her hip. "Besides, you seem to have the surveillance aspect of this operation well in hand. I don't think you've so much as _blinked_ in an hour."

Batman didn't look up at her. Of course, he wouldn't. She could have pranced around in front of him in nothing but a negligee with strategically placed holes in it and he still wouldn't have noticed. Mister All-Business never took his mind off the task. Selina hoped he counted himself lucky that she had a thing for deliciously driven jerks.

With a shrug, she stretched again, lengthening her spine in ways that felt downright sinful. Mmm. Arching her back, she pointed her toes. Oh, that felt _good_. She never should have given up yoga, no matter how ridiculous studio prices were in the part of town where she kept her favorite safe house.

"I don't suppose I could convince you to take a break to do…" she purred, "something that would make the time pass easier, could I?"

"No."

"Well, _you're_ no fun."

"Next time I'll remember to bring a ball of yarn to keep you entertained since I'm so dull."

"Oh, don't be like that. You're boring company, but you're my _favorite_ boring company." Selina crouched next to him on the roof's edge, enjoying the feel of the wind gusting through the spaces between high rises. "Anything yet?"

"No."

Selina braced her hands on the roof and hoisted her feet in the air until she was in a perfectly balanced handstand, then scissored her legs into a split. What really bothered her about stakeouts, other than the crushing boredom, was the passive nature of the activity. Theft was active; casing a place was _active_; even waiting for a guard to turn away to get the drop on him had a certain component of urgency to it. As lazy as they could be when lounging in a sunbeam, cats weren't suited to waiting for a mouse to show up. Cats were predators. Cats _hunted_.

Throwing her legs back until her toes touched the roof, Selina flipped into a standing position. She pulled her goggles from over her eyes and pushed them up onto her forehead. "Well, this has been a thrill a minute, but I'm feeling peckish. There's a great taco truck a few blocks down. Want anything?"

"I don't eat tacos," he said. "I'm Batman."

_Of course. How could I forget?_ With a roll of her eyes, Selina put her goggles back on and slipped into the darkness.

She sped across the rooftops, leaping from building to building and using her whip to get across the distances that were too long to jump without assistance. After a solid hour of doing nothing, the movement felt fantastic. It felt so good, in fact, that on the way to the _Paco's Tacos_ truck on thirty-second, she stopped long enough to put an end to a couple of muggings in progress, dropped some cash in the hands of some of the homeless people haunting the alleyways, and gave three different stray cats a friendly scratch behind the ears. Though she was far from stingy generally, even a small boost to her mood always put her in a more charitable mindset.

With a gentle thump, she leaped down onto the roof of the taco truck. Like just about everything else at three o'clock in the morning, it was closed and locked up tight. But, it was still a taco truck, and no match for the likes of Catwoman. She made short work of the locks, careful to leave them in good enough shape that she could secure the door before she left again, and slunk inside. Selina popped open the small refrigeration unit and peeped inside. Paco had graciously left enough fresh taco fixings behind for her to make a snack.

She threw a handful of cold chicken strips into some soft taco shells, tossed them into the mini-microwave beside the fridge for a few seconds and then took them out again. After liberally covering the chicken with diced tomatoes, lettuce, cheese and a variety of sauces, she picked up one of the pens Paco supplied to customers for signing their credit card receipts and two pieces of scrap paper. On one she scribbled a message, on the other she scrawled a little picture of a cat and fished a hundred dollar bill out of her suit to fold around it. Selina dropped the money on the counter, wrapped up her tacos and tossed them, along with the hastily written message, in a bag.

Making sure the door locked again behind her, Selina headed back to the part of the city where Batman was almost certainly still brooding. As expected, she found him exactly as she'd left him.

"_Still_ nothing?" She asked, unwrapping her taco and taking a bite.

"No."

"You know, I like a man of few words as much as the next girl, but you _could_ try communicating with more than one syllable once in awhile."

He said nothing, just as she knew he would. Selina polished off her taco and dropped the bag with the remaining ones next to him. "I'll be back."

"Going out for dessert this time?"

"I might." With a smooth roll of her wrist, she cracked her whip and wound it around a flagpole across the way, two windows up from the apartment they'd been staking out. For the first time all night, he looked right at her, realizing too late what she had planned. She gave him a grin.

"_Selina…_" His tone was pure warning.

It was all he got out before she lifted off the roof and swung down with practiced ease. She compensated for the distance between the flagpole and the window, tucked her body into a ball and crashed right through the glass. The apartment's occupant screamed and went for his gun, but she hit him with a roundhouse kick that sent him staggering and crashing into the wall.

When he scrambled to his feet he stared at her, panic written all over his face. Clearly he wasn't expecting a member of the cape and cowl set busting into his living room.

"Hey, handsome. Nice eyes—" Selina gave him a seductive smile and flicked open her claws "—Wanna keep 'em?"

He rushed at her, not the wisest move he could have made. She punched him in the face, his nose crunching under the force of her knuckles, and knocked him down. Before he could get his bearings, she hauled him up by the collar, wrapped the whip around his legs and pushed him out the window.

There he dangled, arms flailing wildly as he screeched, "I'll talk! I'll tell you anything you want!"

"Really?" She said, almost disappointed. "A broken nose and five seconds swinging in the breeze and you're already going to give it up? Information comes so cheap these days."

She pulled him back up into the apartment. It took minutes for him to tell her everything he knew and write down the most pertinent bits, and a few minutes after that she was back on the rooftop with Batman. He did not look pleased when she shoved a piece of paper at him with a name and address on it.

"Here's where we'll find the perp."

"You're worse than Robin."

Selina smirked. "Which one?"

He glared at her, but took the paper anyway. "That was reckless."

"It's just as well," she said with a shrug and scooped up her abandoned tacos. "He wasn't going to be here tonight anyway. We would have been waiting all night, with nothing to do. I'm actually surprised you didn't know—"

There was a slight narrowing of his eyes and Selina's thought processes ground to a halt.

"You _did_ know that," she said, disbelieving but still pleased at the realization. "Don't tell me you went through all this trouble just to spend some time with me?"

"It's almost daybreak," he grumbled, refusing to answer the question.

Selina couldn't help herself. She planted a kiss on one leather covered cheek, leaving a lipstick print behind and handed him the Paco's Tacos bag. Leave it to Batman to think that a stakeout was a good idea for a date.

He turned aside, not acknowledging the gesture of affection and stared out over the city. "We should go. I'll pass the information along to Gordon, he'll take care of it."

There was no response. Batman looked back to where she had been standing and found her already gone, having pulled one of his own patented disappearing acts. He glanced down at the bag she'd left in his hand with a taco and a little piece of scrap paper inside. Leaving the food where it was, he plucked out the paper and read the words in her unmistakable handwriting: _Eat something, stupid._


End file.
